Though I’d been bribing him
with yummy baby food for weeks,

after I added the magic powder
to help him relax in the carrier,

Maxi walked away. Of course.
You’re on to me, aren’t you?

I said at 6:30 a.m., too early for
both of us. But I left the moosh

in a dish by his tall cup of water,
which he has come to prefer in his

new room at my house, and I said
aloud to the companion cat spirits,

OK, you guys. Help here.
Dude needs a good clipping

to get all the mats off and
a good once-over by Dr. Sue,

who as a girl sat with Donna
and me in our mother’s house

with a fresh batch of six-week-old
kittens of Fluffy’s (a mini version

of Maxi, now that I think of it).
We’d diligently work to “train”

the baby kitties to use a litter box,
plopping them in the sand and

guiding a little forepaw to dig.
As if they didn’t have such instinct

hard-wired into their feline DNA.
And decades later Sue became

Dr. Sue, and decades after that
I’m driving the big guy an hour

up the mountain to see her and
her team, Maxi complaining

all the way. But his cry wavers
after a while, and I relax, too,

because Maxi did eventually
eat the doctored baby food.

I imagine that he’s growing
less fearful with every mile—

and me, too—as if, after all
these years, I’ve learned

a thing or three about the
mysterious minds of cats.

•••

With thanks to the original girl-next-door BFF
and veterinarian extraordinaire Dr. Susan Lester
and the great team at Four Paws Animal Clinic in
Nevada City, California, for their excellent medical
care as well as removing Maxi’s many mats.